Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Is curiosity the core of transformative learning? In-service history and science teachers gained subject knowledge, classroom practice, and pedagogical understanding during extended online professional development courses when collaborating to solve inquiry- and problem-based learning scenarios. After experiencing these approaches, they applied them to their own classroom lessons, while exploring the impact during online discussions. Tasks evolved from asking individual questions, to collaborative problem-solving, to professional learning communities that generated understandings at complex, communal, and cultural levels. Using modified discourse analysis, this investigation examines the underlying human connectivity in online dialogues about problem-solving among educators as the key dynamic that shapes communities of learners. It demonstrates the capacity of teachers, in collegial groups, to engage in their professional culture. This study demonstrates evolution from personal curiosity into professional learning communities, from teachers into their classrooms. Learners build repertoires of common knowledge, shared resources, identity, and enrichment that exceeds individual academic competencies. Distinctive passages of online dialogue document this transformation in the use of symbols, metaphor, narrative, logic, collegiality, and sense of time. Patterns of online dialogue demonstrate humanistic qualities in science and history education that emerge when learning becomes a process of nourishing constructive curiosity instead of replicating previously established knowledge.